


Normal as a Wedding

by Antosha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bible Quotes, Bill and Fleur’s Wedding, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Luna Lovegood Being Luna Lovegood, Post-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Romance, Teen Romance, The Burrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24007870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: It's Bill and Fleur's wedding, and Harry discovers that you never know where a single kiss will take you. (Writtenjustpost-HBP.)
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Kudos: 18





	Normal as a Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> So, I post a pair of fics (Monster and Carpe) less than four days after the new book comes out, full of vim, vigor and theories, and what happens? Less than twenty-four hours later, the third and final part of JKR's interview with MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron is posted, blowing the basic premises behind these two brand new fics out of the water and rendering them instantly AU. Ooops.
> 
> Mind, I loved the interviews. Just so you don't get any ideas. Still...
> 
> What's a fic writer to do?
> 
> Chase after another bunny, of course! Wasscally wabbit!

Ginny looked spectacular in pale gold bridesmaid’s robes, just as Fleur had predicted. Gabrielle looked lovely in them too, for that matter, and so did Fleur in her simple white gown. Harry sat, looking up at the three of them, and realized that perhaps doing without a love life was going to be neither as easy nor as good an idea as he had thought last month.  
  
It had seemed so straightforward in June. He had realized that he was putting Ginny in danger, and that he needed to concentrate on getting rid of Tom Riddle. In the wake of Dumbledore’s death, Harry had felt guilty taking pleasure in anything, even in her. But as Bill and Fleur exchanged vows, flanked by Ginny and Gabrielle, Charlie and Ron, he could feel a deep hunger welling up inside of him, felt the animal growling, and bit the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood.  
  
Sitting next to him, Luna patted Harry’s leg and favored him with an unusually focused smile. “There are times, you know, when having is actually better than wanting, Harry,” she whispered.  
  
Unsure what to say, how to feel about such an extraordinary statement, Harry nodded in a manner that he hoped was vaguely knowing.  
  
On his other side, Hermione sniffled loudly.  
  
  
  
As the party congregated in the Burrow’s sitting room, sipping lemonade, pumpkin juice and white wine, Harry’s gaze followed Ginny. She, however, seemed to be studiously avoiding him, preferring to grin at Ron and Hermione, who were flirting shyly with each other. He was about to join them when he felt a feather-light touch on his shoulder. He turned to find two startling blue eyes locked to his.  
  
“’Arry,” said Gabrielle Delacour in a voice that was both small and resonant. “I ‘ave wanted to talk weeth you so.” She peered up at him so intently that it was with difficulty that Harry remembered that he was looking at a twelve-year-old girl.  
  
“Uh, congratulations, Gabrielle.”  
  
She blinked. “What? Oh. _Le mariage._ _Oui. Merci_.” She bit her lip and looked around, and Harry was relieved to see that she did indeed look her own age, even if only for a moment. “’Arry,” she stammered, “I, you ‘ave save my life in ze _lac_ , you are... I ‘ave...” Again she bit her lip, glanced around, and then stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth.  
  
For a moment, the kiss enveloped Harry, and he felt more content that he had done since before the funeral, as if someone had wrapped him in a gauzy blanket of sunlight. Then a howl burst up from within him, not of desire but of shock and outrage. He broke away from the young part-Veela and spluttered, “I d-didn’t save you, Gabrielle. You were safe the whole time. B-but you’re v-very welcome.”  
  
She frowned as if she had expected him to react differently.  
  
“And Gabrielle?” Harry said, and her eyes widened expectantly. “You’re a beautiful, wonderful girl, Gabrielle. But don’t ever do that to a boy, ever again. You deserve someone who chooses you, not someone you’ve enchanted. Do you understand?”  
  
The young blonde’s face fell, and she scurried out of the room.  
  
Noting the sudden silence, Harry realized that everyone present was staring at him—from Bill and Fleur, who looked intrigued, to Ron and Hermione, who seemed concerned, to Luna, who appeared to be vaguely amused.  
  
The only face not turned towards him was Ginny’s. In fact, he could not find her anywhere. She too had left the room. Damn. He staggered over to Luna. “Where is she?”  
  
Luna smiled mistily at him. “Which one? You’re making it difficult to keep track, Harry. Gabrielle seems to have run up to the water closet. Ginny went out into the garden, I think.”  
  
“Thanks,” Harry muttered and began to push through the Delacours, who were standing between him and the exit. “ _Pardon. Pardon._ ”  
  
“I’m not very good at noticing these things, Harry,” Luna called to him, “but Ginny didn’t look very happy.”  
  
The crowd chuckled as he ran from house. Great. He was starring in a bloody farce. Which seemed about right, since except for about four weeks in May and June, that’s just what his love life had always been.  
  
He found her out past where the altar was slowly being covered with leaves and petals from the garden; she was sitting in an oak, her golden robes trailing down to just above Harry’s head. “Ginny...”  
  
She didn’t even bother to look down. “If I’d known you liked them so young, I would have tried myself years ago,” she said, the softness of her tone belying the bitterness of the words.  
  
“I don’t, Ginny, please...”  
  
“I think,” she said, “that the thing that bothers me most is that I thought we really understood each other. I thought you were being straight with me at the funeral. If you just wanted to let me down easy—“  
  
“No, please, Ginny, it’s not like that at all.” The thought that she might even consider that he would do such a thing made his stomach twist.  
  
“What _is_ it like, then?” she asked, gazing down for the first time; he could see that her eyes were puffy and pink. He wanted to scream. “I liked Gooprielle, too. More than Phlegm, any way. She seemed so sweet, and shy, and she kept wanting to talk to me about you, and about Life Debt, and how does one know if there really is one or not, and I think the reason that I’m crying now isn’t you, Potter, so don’t get all stupid and noble about it, it’s just that I’ve only now realized what a silly creature I am.” He began to interrupt but she stopped him with a gesture of her hand. “I’m a silly creature, Harry, because I had all the same thoughts and feelings for you that that little... girl has, but I never had the courage to act on them the way that she just did. I went through years of thinking that somehow my _noble_ suffering, pining away for you, mattered, when it really didn’t. It didn’t make you feel any differently toward me, it didn’t mean that you _owed_ me anything. There is no Life Debt between us, Harry. There’s no fate that says that the poor girl has to get the prince in the end. And I’m really angry with myself that that sort of crap still pops into my head.” She sniffed. “We’re both almost adults. We had some laughs, we broke it off. You can kiss whoever you want.”  
  
Harry put one foot on the tree. “There’s only one person I want to kiss, Ginny,” he said, “and she’s not blonde, and she’s not twelve and she didn’t try to use a Veela glamour on me.” He gazed up. Ginny was looking towards the horizon again. “May I come up?”  
  
She shrugged.  
  
Slowly, he pulled himself up, branch by branch, until he sat beside her, not on the same limb, but at the same level. “Do you know what I’ve been thinking for the past twenty-four hours, since I got here?”  
  
She shook her head.  
  
“I’ve been thinking that I’m the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. I’ve been thinking that nothing has ever made me happier than being with you—not finding out I was a wizard, not meeting Sirius, not even Quidditch.” She gave a wet laugh. He hadn’t been joking, but was pleased even so. “I’ve been thinking that instead of spending the last month at the Dursleys’ dreaming about your touch, waking up thinking I could catch your scent on my pillow, I could have been writing you, telling you how much I need you, how much I want you, how much I... I’ve been thinking that life is short and that if my dad had done to my mum what I did to you, I might never have been born. I’ve been thinking—“  
  
She interrupted him with a kiss. It was his second in a half-hour, and so far beyond the first that he wondered briefly if there might not be more Veela blood among the Weasleys than the Delacours.  
  
When they broke apart some ten minutes later, Ginny’s eyes were bright and hawk-sharp. “I’m sorry. I interrupted you. What was it you were thinking?”  
  
He held her face between his hands, suddenly aware that he knew every line, every freckle, every quirk of that face, and that he was bound to them and to the woman to whom they belonged by something stronger and more tangible than any debt, magical or otherwise. “I was thinking. Erm, I was thinking that you aren’t any safer away from me than with me, what with your whole family except for Percy being in the Order, and everyone knowing you’ve been my girlfriend. Snape and Malfoy certainly know, and if they do, so does Voldemort. I was thinking that if you get hurt it might destroy me, but if I don’t get to kiss you again like that, it will definitely kill me. I’ve been thinking that I need all of the help I can get tracking down these... they’re called Horcruxes, and they’re little pieces of Tom Riddle that he’s hidden away so he won’t die, and no one knows Tom Riddle better than you do, and no one deserves the chance to stop him more than you.”  
  
She pulled him to her again, her mouth and tongue small and hot against his. “ _I_ was thinking that Professor MacGonagall was telling Mum last night that the school probably wouldn’t open this fall,” she murmured. “I was thinking that anywhere you let me go, I will follow, and maybe even where you don’t. I was thinking that it scares the bloody hell out of me to think of you fighting for your life and not being there to help.” She leaned her forehead against his. “If you tell me to stay away, Harry, I will, and I don’t know who that would make the bigger idiot. But I don’t want to. Stay away, that is.”  
  
“God, you’re Mum’s going to kill me.” Emotion was boiling up inside of Harry and it stunned him that feelings that were so good could scare him quite so much. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” he said. “I...”  
  
She waited for a moment and then pulled back slightly, peering at him. “Is it about Tom?”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
“Is it about my age, or my safety or something?”  
  
Again he shook his head, emphatically.  
  
“Well,” she said, a mischievous smirk playing across her lips, “is it about some harem of pre-adolescents that you’ve been hiding from me?” He slapped her knee and she laughed. “What is it then?”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
“Oh.” She looked down at her hands, which were clutching at the shiny golden skirts of her robes. “Oh.” She looked at him, took a breath and said, “I love you, too, Harry. I have forever. You know that, right?”  
  
He nodded, and they kissed again.  
  
When time resumed once more, Ginny sighed into Harry’s neck, “I always thought I’d be the one to say that first.”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be stupid. I’m glad. Even if it’s only because I caught you with your Veela lover.”  
  
“Hey!” he said indignantly, which made them both laugh. Slowly they climbed out of the tree. When they were standing before the leaf-strewn altar, Harry said, “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do anything as normal as this, Ginny.”  
  
She shrugged. “Did you know my full name is Ginevra? Ginevra Molly.”  
  
“No! It’s really pretty.” When she smirked, he continued, “It is. My name’s just Harry. Harry James.”  
  
Grinning, she said, “Wow! Wait till Dad finds out. He’ll play you Harry James records on that crazy Muggle contraption in the sitting room for hours.” She took both of his hands in hers. “Whither thou goest, I will go. Whither thou liest, I will lie.”  
  
His breath caught. He recognized the quote; someone had written it on the back of one of the pictures from his parents’ wedding. “Thy people will be my people, and thy God my God.”  
  
She smiled up at him. “That ought to cover it, don’t you think?” When he nodded, she said, “Then let’s go inside and make sure Gabrielle isn’t too upset. Or too hopeful, for that matter. And that no one thinks I’ve killed you.”  
  
Oh, he thought, but you did, Ginevra Molly. You did.


End file.
